In crisis, CNN aims to rethink the brand

6/26/12 7:04 PM EDT

.... While CNN struggles to make 24-hour news compelling, its competitors at Fox News and MSNBC have redefined the industry. They have eschewed traditional, straight-forward newsgathering in favor of partisan, personality driven analysis — a model that is increasingly successful in an era of hyper-partisan politics, but one that CNN has resisted even as its ratings continue their slow and steady decline.

There is now, according to industry experts, a very real possibility that without a coherent strategy, the only nonpartisan network left on cable could become largely irrelevant to the national conversation. [...]

In interviews with POLITICO, several staffers throughout the organization described CNN as a troubled network suffering from an absence of editorial leadership. “There is no editorial guidance, no editorial culture,” said one staffer, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. “We’re always chasing the story. How often do you see something that’s fresh and distinctive?” [...]

Feist and other network spokespeople dismiss the ratings comparison, arguing that CNN is not in the same category as MSNBC and Fox News. Where those two offer ideologically driven, partisan analysis, CNN is the only U.S. cable news organization committed to nonpartisan news-gathering, they say.

“My comparison to MSNBC and Fox News is a very simple one,” Feist told POLITICO. “We don’t do what they do. We produce different products. I don’t think CNN should be in the same category as they are.”

“As a news organization our ratings reflect the news environment much more so than the other networks,” said a spokesperson. “That said, we always want higher ratings, but not at the expense of non-partisan, quality journalism.”

In meetings, Feist has said that people should think of CNN as a premium channel for news, the way CNBC is a premium channel for finance. That thinking benefits CNN, because people never judge CNBC based on its ratings, which are very low. But it is also a radical admission for a network that, from its launch in 1980 until 10 years ago, was the leading cable news network on television — and one that the industry may therefore have a hard time taking seriously ....